This feature is available to authenticated users only.

Eric Anderson, Dominique White, Erika Siegel, Lisa Barrett; Out of sight, but not out of mind: Affect as a source of information about visual images. Journal of Vision 2010;10(7):602. doi: 10.1167/10.7.602.

Recent evidence suggests that affect influences visual processing. To further explore this, we used Continuous Flash Suppression (CSF) as a technique to suppress stimuli from conscious visual awareness. Previous research has demonstrated that while suppressed images are experienced as unseen, they are still processed by the brain. In this study, we explored to what degree suppressed images are processed and whether suppressed images influence behavior. Consciously seen neutral faces were paired with suppressed angry, happy, or neutral faces rendered invisible with CFS. Participants rated the neutral faces as more unpleasant when paired with an unseen angry face and more pleasant when paired with an unseen happy face. These findings demonstrate that affective information is extracted by the brain from faces rendered invisible by CFS, and that this affective information is readily misattributed to a different, consciously seen face.